Tom Bowcock Pitman

: The World Peril Of 1910

Lennard found himself standing outside the Trinity Street Station at

Bolton a few minutes after six that evening.



Of course it was raining. Rain and fine-spun cotton thread are Bolton's

specialities, the two chief pillars of her fame and prosperity, for

without the somewhat distressing superabundance of the former she could

not spin the latter fine enough. It would break in the process.

Wherefore the good
citizens of Bolton cheerfully put up with the dirt

and the damp and the abnormal expenditure on umbrellas and mackintoshes

in view of the fact that all the world must come to Bolton for its

finest threads.



He stood for a moment looking about him curiously, if with no great

admiration in his soul, for this was his first sight of what was to be

the scene of the greatest and most momentous undertaking that human

skill had ever dared to accomplish.



But the streets of Bolton on a wet night do not impress a stranger very

favourably, so he had his flat steamer-trunk and hat-box put on to a cab

and told the driver to take him to the Swan Hotel, in Deansgate, where

he had a wash and an excellent dinner, to which he was in a condition to

do full justice--for though nation may rage against nation, and worlds

and systems be in peril, the healthy human digestion goes on making its

demands all the time, and, under the circumstances, blessed is he who

can worthily satisfy them.



Then, after a cup of coffee and a meditative cigar, he put on his

mackintosh, sent for a cab, and drove to number 134 Manchester Road,

which is one of a long row of small, two-storeyed brick houses, as clean

as the all-pervading smoke and damp will permit them to be, but not

exactly imposing in the eyes of a new-comer.



When the door opened in answer to his knock he saw by the light of a

lamp hanging from the ceiling of the narrow little hall a small, slight,

neatly-dressed figure, and a pair of dark, soft eyes looked up

inquiringly at him as he said:



"Is Mr Bowcock at home?"



"Yes, he is," replied a voice softly and very pleasantly tinged with the

Lancashire accent. Then in a rather higher key the voice said:



"Tom, ye're wanted."



As she turned away Lennard paid his cabman, and when he went back to the

door he found the passage almost filled by a tall, square-shouldered

shape of a man, and a voice to match it said:



"If ye're wantin' Tom Bowcock, measter, that's me. Will ye coom in? It's

a bit wet i' t' street."



Lennard went in, and as the door closed he said:



"Mr Bowcock, my name is Lennard--"



"I thou't it might be," interrupted the other. "You'll be Lord

Westerham's friend. I had a wire from his lordship's morning telling me

t' expect you to-night or to-morrow morning. You'll excuse t' kitchen

for a minute while t' missus makes up t' fire i' t' sittin'-room."



When Lennard got into the brightly-lighted kitchen, which is really the

living-room of small Lancashire houses, he found himself in an

atmosphere of modest cosy comfort which is seldom to be found outside

the North and the Midland manufacturing districts. It is the other side

of the hard, colourless life that is lived in mill and mine and forge,

and it has a charm that is all its own.



There was the big range, filling half the space of one of the

side-walls, its steel framings glittering like polished silver; the high

plate-rack full of shining crockery at one end by the door, and the low,

comfortable couch at the other; two lines of linen hung on cords

stretched under the ceiling airing above the range, and the solid deal

table in the middle of the room was covered with a snow-white cloth, on

which a pretty tea-service was set out.



A brightly polished copper kettle singing on the range, and a daintily

furnished cradle containing a sleeping baby, sweetly unconscious of wars

or world-shaking catastrophes, completed a picture which, considering

his errand, affected Gilbert Lennard very deeply.



"Lizzie" said the giant, "this is Mr Lennard as his lordship telegraphed

about to-day. I daresay yo can give him a cup of tay and see to t' fire

i' t' sittin'-room. I believe he's come to have a bit of talk wi' me

about summat important from what his lordship said."



"I'm pleased to see you, Mr Lennard," said the pleasant voice, and as he

shook hands he found himself looking into the dark, soft eyes of a

regular "Lancashire witch," for Lizzie Bowcock had left despair in the

heart of many a Lancashire lad when she had put her little hand into big

Tom's huge fist and told him that she'd have him for her man and no one

else.



She left the room for a few minutes to see to the sitting-room fire, and

Lennard turned to his host and said:



"Mr Bowcock, I have come to see you on a matter which will need a good

deal of explanation. It will take quite a couple of hours to put the

whole thing before you, so if you have any other engagements for

to-night, no doubt you can take a day off to-morrow--in fact, as the pit

will have to stop working--"



"T' 'pit stop working, Mr Lennard!" exclaimed the manager. "Yo' dunno

say so. Is that his lordship's orders? Why, what's up?"



"I will explain everything, Mr Bowcock," replied Lennard, "only, for her

own sake, your wife must know nothing at present. The only question is,

shall we have a talk to-night or not?"



"If it's anything that's bad," replied the big miner with a deeper note

in his voice, "I'd soonest hear it now. Mysteries don't get any t'

better for keepin'. Besides, it'll give me time to sleep on't; and

that's not a bad thing to do when yo've a big job to handle."



Mrs Bowcock came back as he said this, and Lennard had his cup of tea,

and they of course talked about the war. Naturally, the big miner and

his pretty little wife were the most interested people in Lancashire

just then, for to no one else in the County Palatine had been given the

honour of hearing the story of the great battle off the Isle of Wight

from the lips of one who had been through it on board the now famous

Ithuriel.



But when Tom Bowcock came out of the little sitting-room three hours

later, after Lennard had told him of the approaching doom of the world

and had explained to him how his pit-shaft was to be used as a means of

averting it--should that, after all, prove to be possible--his interest

in the war had diminished very considerably, for he had already come to

see clearly that this was undeniably a case of the whole being very much

greater than the part.



Tom Bowcock was one of those men, by no means rare in the north, who

work hard with hands and head at the same time. He was a pitman, but he

was also a scientific miner, almost an engineer, and so Lennard had

found very little difficulty in getting him to grasp the details of the

tremendous problem in the working out of which he was destined to play

no mean part.



"Well, Measter Lennard," he said, slowly, as they rose from the little

table across which a very large amount of business had been transacted.

"It's a pretty big job this that yo've putten into our hands, and

especially into mine; but I reckon they'll be about big enough for it;

and yo've come to t' right place, too. I've never heard yet of a job as

Lancashire took on to as hoo didn't get through wi'.



"Now, from what yo've been telling me, yo' must be a bit of an early

riser sometimes, so if yo'll come here at seven or so i' t' mornin',

I'll fit yo' out wi' pit clothes and we'll go down t' shaft and yo' can

see for yoursel' what's wantin' doin'. Maybe that'll help yo' before yo'

go and make yo'r arrangements wi' Dobson & Barlow and t'other folk as

yo'll want to help yo'."



"Thank you very much, Mr Bowcock," replied Lennard. "You will find me

here pretty close about seven. It's a big job, as you say, and there's

not much time to be lost. Now, if Mrs Bowcock has not gone to bed, I'll

go and say good-night."



"She's no'on to bed yet," said his host, "and yo'll take a drop o'

summat warm before yo' start walkin' to t' hotel, for yo'll get no cab

up this way to-neet. She'll just have been puttin' t' youngster to

bed--"



Tom Bowcock stopped suddenly in his speech as a swift vision of that

same "youngster" and his mother choking in the flames of the Fire-Mist

passed across his senses. Lennard had convinced his intellect of the

necessity of the task of repelling the Celestial Invader and of the

possibility of success; but from that moment his heart was in the work.



It had stopped raining and the sky had cleared a little when they went

to the door half an hour later. To the right, across the road, rose a

tall gaunt shape like the skeleton of an elongated pyramid crowned with

two big wheels. Lights were blazing round it, for the pit was working

night and day getting the steam coal to the surface.



"Yonder's t' shaft," said Tom, as they shook hands. "It doesn't look

much of a place to save the world in, does it?"



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